


trapeze

by fondleeds



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, First Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 22:49:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18508669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fondleeds/pseuds/fondleeds
Summary: “Do you ever think about that?” he continues, both thumbs now folding over the edge of the book, pages bending and flickering back into place, like the dull beat of the moths wings. “Like, if you died, would another version of yourself keep living? Or would the other you, all those people, would they disappear, too?”-AU. The lake house is all gold and they've only got a week.





	trapeze

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this over two very strangely warm autumn days and i'm not quite sure where it came from.
> 
> playlist [here.](https://open.spotify.com/user/gonewilde/playlist/0iWOhBdNOwaqnIVYNXKT8T?si=UQ3MoLpcRpui-xohsEHc2Q)
> 
> ♡

 

_tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us._

_these, our bodies, possessed by light._

_tell me we'll never get used to it._

 

_siken_

 

_-_

 

Despite the dryness the pines still look wet with dew, and that’s the gold light, Zayn thinks, the aura that makes them look damp with concentrated sun. It’s all coming down in one big sweep, clouds thin, hollowed out this late in the noon, but still the sticky heat lingers much like the dew, and with hot cheeks he tugs his shirt away from his sweating chest, damp under his arms with none such aura that hugs the gathering of tall trees.

The lake is a slither of glass, one stray finger-poke away from snowflake splinter. He’s half tempted to run down the bank and fall headfirst into the water, just to see what patterns he could make. There’s a tiny little dock, the pier there stretching old and frayed out into the murky water, little boat tied up close, and further along the bank is the house, grand, logwood and dark and honey, bay windows all shined up with the falling sun, and Zayn sees it everywhere, the gold; it lingers in loose pine needles and the edges of the clouds and against the edges of their shiny car as they finally come to a shuddering stop, tires bumping over uneven ground.

There are two sleek four-wheelers parked in the shade already, and the suffocating silence of the car is suddenly shattered, like a stray finger dipping into the lake water, as Zayn’s father shoves open the driver-side door. Music can be heard coming from inside, warm bubbles of laughter through the windows, and somewhere close, through the cracks in the trees, Zayn makes out a flash of movement as he too, cautiously, opens his door and peers out into their surroundings.

The smell hits him first, summer, but not quite: it’s darker, deeper, embedded into the wood and the soil and the river bed. The next step beyond summer, the almost-come-down, the pure heat before autumn comes crashing through the still water. Then there’s the vaguely familiar smell of barbecued meat, the sweet, sugary warmth of corn and salt and butter, and underneath it, the sharp zing of mosquito repellent. Zayn looks out at the lake again. The sun is almost there, reaching, reaching, reaching–

“You fucking dick!”

A shrill scream of laughter, another round of cackling, the pines behind them shuddering and sweeping as they part, two figures breaking from the tree line with damp hair and sodden clothes, an old water pistol wrapped tight in the hands of a boy, a young girl running from him with her hair dripping wet on her sunburnt shoulders. Their eyes are bright, legs coated in stray pine needles. Zayn barely gets a look at their faces, ducking instinctively behind his door as they sprint past and round the corner of the house, out of sight.

“Anne and her brood are here already, then,” Trisha says, mouth in a thin line as she pops the trunk.

“ _Everyone_ is here,” Yaser says. Zayn glances at his father, between them both, the sharp glare as they pass their bags roughly to each other. “We’re late.”

“If _someone_ hadn’t been caught up at the office–”

They continue to bicker. In the distance, there’s still the faint sound of echoed laughter and stumbling feet, but then his dad hands him a bag and his arms are weighed down, and they shuffle towards the grand house, still touched gold.

Inside, things are open and tall, everything big, the lounge suite and the rugged dining table and the kitchen island, tall cabinetry, tall windows, tall staircase winding upwards, soft rugs, mahogany and amber laced into the wood and the frames and the finishings, taxidermy and a fireplace and all the gaudiness that Zayn expected but still wasn’t quite prepared for. Dumbfounded, he stands in the entry way for a moment with his arms full.

They’re greeted, they unpack, there’s dark wine and large fishbowl glasses and glinting rings, people Zayn has never met in his life pinching the collar of his polo as they speak down to him – _oh, we’ve heard so much about you_ and _aren’t you so handsome?_ and _how long until you’re following in his shoes?_ – the whole affair overwhelming from it’s very beginning. Inside the air is stuffy, too hot with the way the sun is coming in, pushing through the windows and turning it all magic and full of spun dust. The heat gets worse as he climbs the stairs, _end of the hall, on the left, that’s your spot,_ and up here it’s much the same, wide window at the end of the hall, tall, peaked ceiling, rich finishing and lush rugs and when he turns the doorknob, he’s surprised that he finds only two small singles and not some pillow-stuffed king four poster, the most ostentatious and ridiculous thing he can think of.

It’s a modest collection of meaningless things hidden behind a big brass doorknob and a lavish hall rug.

Zayn drops his bag on the bed by the window and sighs.

Not even a second later, the door bursts open and he jumps out of his skin.

“Oh. Hi? Sorry.” The boy there stands frozen, frowning. He seems to assess Zayn, eyes flicking over his face, the bag on the bed, the window. “I already claimed the window bed.”

Soft face and soft hair, wet, some of it clinging in curls to his cheeks, and he’s a little pink, no shirt, just wet shorts and dirty feet and Zayn feels something physically clench in his chest, this hot-sharp flush ricocheting up into his cheeks as he stands there, still frozen, now more mortified than before. The boy is still just staring at him, kind of lazy and lofty, and Zayn notices that there’s an old, yellowed book on the bedside table when he finally looks over, like the bed will give him some form of answer to a question he’s yet to ask.

“Right,” he stammers. “Sorry. I, uh. I didn’t know.”

“My stuff’s _right there_ ,’ the boy says, gesturing with a shove of his palm.

“Yeah, I–” Zayn shrugs helplessly. He feels sweaty and stupid all of the sudden, crawling out of his skin. “I didn’t see, really. I’m sorry–”

“I’m just playing with you,” the boy says, and suddenly there’s a smile like flipping a coin and finding that the other side has been polished, slicked and cool to the touch. Easy and laid back, the boy struts through the room and flops onto the window bed, hands behind his head and smile placid and too-cool, dirty feet messing the sheets. “But seriously, this one’s mine.”

Zayn nods awkwardly and heaves his bag up, letting it fall loudly onto the other single. There’s a tiny ensuite, he notices now, tucked away by the sliding doors of the cupboards. Behind him, he hears movement, and when Zayn glances over his shoulder, sure he’s still embarrassingly beet-red, the boy has shifted onto his side, chin in palm.

“You’re Zayn, right?” he says, cupped palm turning now into an accusatory point of a finger, a circular wiggle as his eyes form into slits, smile still there. “Mom told me all about you.”

“About me?”

“Yeah.” The boy’s smile widens. Zayn can’t tell if it’s malicious or playful. “Little prodigy, all of that crap.”

“I don’t know your name,” Zayn diverts. He crosses his arms over his turning stomach; still, he stands almost in the centre of the room, and with the boy lounging on the bed he feels like he’s being assessed, like there are hands about to tighten his tie and tuck in his shirt and button up his school blazer.

“It’s Harry. Harry Styles?” the boy says, head dipping like _duh? Don’t you already know?_

Zayn scratches awkwardly at the hair behind his ear, one arm still tucked close to his chest. It’s a weird, fidgeting movement, something he never does. He’s always the cool, collected one in his friend group, the one who gets what he wants with a smile, but this is almost an ambush, the universe dropping Harry here as a test.

So far, Zayn’s failing, if the slithering, calm smile flushed cooly over Harry’s features is anything to go by.

“Well, I don’t know _anything_ about you,” Zayn says, then, chest puffing out.

Harry gets it. He narrows his eyes as he sits up. “So?”

“So, nothing,” Zayn shrugs, sitting on the edge of his bed. They’re level now. “I was just saying.”

“Just saying, were you.”

“Yeah.”

They stare at each other, and Zayn can feel himself starting to come back now, senses clearing. There’s still a prickling sensation at the back of his neck, though, something curling in his stomach as he watches Harry assess him, eyes trailing from head to toe, every inch, the very same way Zayn watches all the uptown boys do every time he goes to dinner parties and big functions and all the places he doesn’t want to ever be – it’s just like this, that snakey little slither of a glance, the flitter, the quirk of the brow that says _oh?_

Harry leans back on his palms, ankles crossed. Under his feet, a tiny cluster of crushed pine needles have become one with the rug.

“So…” Harry drawls, big grin, playing up their little scuffle now. Flip of a coin. “Looks like we’re roomies, roomie.”

“Brilliant observation,” Zayn says, just to be a dick, just because he can give it back as good as he wants now that they’re eye to eye. “Though I would have preferred to be by myself.”

Harry’s mouth quirks. “You can sleep on the pull-out downstairs if you really want. I won’t stop you.”

“No, this is fine,” Zayn smiles tightly.

The door opens again, Trisha popping her head in with a bright smile.

“How are you two getting on?”

They share a waspish glance that quickly, somehow, in a transition that Zayn doesn’t register, turns almost mirthful, giddy.

“Great,” Harry chirps, laying it on thick as he reclines further. “Swimmingly, some would say.”

Zayn stares at him, the way his chin tilts as he smirks, pink lips and long hair and long torso. That crawling feeling returns. He scratches at the back of his ear again.

“It’s fine, mom,” he says, edged with a brush of embarrassment at her coddling.

“Alright, alright.” Trisha pulls back her hands, as if to surrender. “I know where I’m not wanted. You kids have fun. There’s dinner downstairs when you’re ready, baby.”

“Mom,” Zayn says shortly, quiet, cheeks heating. “We’re not kids.”

The door closes behind her, a jovial _bye!_ muffled by the thick wood, and Zayn runs a hand down the side of his face.

“Well, how are really getting on then, baby?”

Zayn glares, hand still stuck to his cheek as he meets Harry’s eye reluctantly. Crossed ankles tapping lightly together, head lolling onto his shoulder, Harry is the very picture of comfortability, calmness, a kid with the world at the tips of his fingers, and used to having everybody else right there along for the ride. Zayn refuses to play into his hands.

“Swimmingly,” he says tonelessly, and turns away.

-

For all it’s glory and golden-edged prettiness, Zayn can think of nothing worse than a week stuck along a waterfront of any kind, especially a week meant only for business, for the strengthening of relationships between figureheads, Zayn dragged along and stuck to meander about in the heat. Maybe he’d be used to fading into the corners of the room by now, but even still, he’d rather be back home spending the slowly ending summer with his friends, soaking up that last bit of dark heat before the leaves start to sour and he’s back to routine, to the strangling of ties and too-heavy shirts and shoes that crush his toes together no matter how hard he tries to wear them in.

Summer seems the only thing in his life that gives off the vague impression of an alternate reality, the kind where he rides his bike down hills and scrapes his elbows, stays inside and reads and watches sun gloss the window, able to escape the thought of high-rises and their obnoxious city apartment. In these places he has his own handle on what he does with his time, where he goes, what he wants.

Heat rises, and that first night in the lakeside house is a sweltering, restless one.

Harry stays up half the night reading, lamplight blushing the whole room, and Zayn faces the wall and grinds his teeth together until Harry eventually falls asleep, book spread across his bare chest and head lolled at a painful looking angle on the pillows. Zayn pauses only for a moment before he flicks the switch. Harry’s mouth parted soft and hair gone springy from sweat, the humidity leaking in, and then the world is dark and Zayn is left to his own devices in the shadows, too irked to even begin falling into sleep.

The heat at night isn’t the worst of it. There’s bugs, mosquitoes buzzing at a constant, the pungent smell of the lake water and the sun rising too early in the morning, the constant thumping and bumping of unfamiliar bodies drifting up and down the stairs. It all feels like a constant invasion of privacy. He almost punches Harry’s sister, Gemma, the first morning he wakes, who enters the bathroom without knocking, almost colliding with Zayn. She offers only a laughed apology and a clap to Zayn’s shoulder before shoving him out of the room and starting the shower.

At the very least, he can appreciate the beauty of the lake. Morning light makes things soft, even despite the sharp heat that’s soon to come, and out on the front porch, legs tucked tight to his chest, he can start to find that alternate reality he often looks for on these trips, imagining that his friends are the ones inside, that they’re in their twenties, masters of their own destinies and falling forward from their sticky, shaded corners.

Like blundering through glass-water, it’s at one of these very moments, Zayn’s eyes peacefully closed, that Harry decides to make himself known.

“Pretty, huh?” he says loudly, shoving the flyscreen door open with his foot so abruptly that Zayn almost sends himself tumbling backwards from his chair. There’s a bowl of granola in Harry’s hand, a glass of juice in the other, and his hair is a colossal mess, smooth shirt billowing as he sits on the stoop and stretches. When Zayn doesn’t respond, hand still over his chest, Harry smirks, and through a mouthful of granola: “I _said_ , it’s pretty, huh?”

Zayn grinds his teeth together, cheeks hot.

Over the next few hours, he learns, quickly, that Harry has what seems to be no sense of personal space outside of himself.

At the counter while Zayn’s eating breakfast, Harry comes into the kitchen and turns on his iPod, then proceeds to search noisily through the cupboards and fridge for various fruits and oats and yoghurt, blending them obnoxiously and waking the rest of the house. On a walk Zayn takes around the edge of the lake, the blessedly quiet early noon is shattered by Harry’s hoot as he dives headfirst into the still water, ripples pulsing outwards behind him, Gemma following him in with a laugh all her own. Zayn crosses his arms over his stomach as he watches them swim, their parents reclined on the patio with glasses of white wine in hand, paying them no mind, all talk as they recline, and Zayn can only watch them for so long before his insides start to twist.

Sitting with his parents almost becomes a torturous event, only because he knows what’s to come, the boasting of his achievements going tick-for-tack on Harry and Gemma’s own, and Zayn learns more than he really needed to, sitting with his hands clasped between his legs as he watches Harry glide through the water, sun raining down, looking all the more fitting to the picture his parents paint.

Harry is top of his class. Harry is set to accept offers from this college and that college. Harry plays cello and violin and piano. Harry takes acting classes. Harry already has his entire plan set out for him, his position in his father’s business, as Des brags effortlessly, as well as his own side businesses and aspirations. It all paints a very pretty, predictable picture, one Zayn could have drawn up himself in waxy crayon. On the surface Harry is a carbon copy of ninety percent of the boys Zayn has met, the old money type with so much free time that their boredom born out of a lack of attention is never given the chance to fester, instead moulded into a multitude of perfections.

And on the surface, in that bed across from Zayn late at night, as he rolls over with gritted teeth and stares at Harry’s soft features, he can see it all. _Perfect, aren’t you,_ he thinks to himself. _Picture perfect._ Like still lake water, begging to be rippled.

Maybe the most significant thing that Zayn learns about Harry is that beneath that glaze of gold, he is nothing like the boy he’s supposed to be.

-

“Hey, roomie!”

Zayn rolls his eyes and continues walking. Day three. He’s sunburnt, irritated, under-eyes all hollowed out and sore from another sleepless night. He doesn’t quite have the emotional stamina to deal with anyone but himself right now.

“ _Roomie_ ,” Harry calls again, catching up to Zayn with a puff of breath. He’s all smiles, nudging Zayn’s shoulder and almost tripping him up in his exhilaration, like a puppy too quick for its own stubby legs, falling over itself in its enthusiasm. It’s barely gone eight in the morning, and as someone who often sleeps until noon, Zayn really, _truly_ , doesn’t have the emotional stamina for this. “What’re you doing?”

“Walking,” Zayn says listlessly. “I thought that was fairly obvious.”

“Ha- _Ha_ ,” Harry sounds out, features simpering into that collected coolness he carries so well. Dappled sunlight filters down over them weakly, leaving Harry’s skin kissed gold. “Aren’t you so clever?”

“You’re the one who knows so much about me,” Zayn says, lifting a brow. Maybe it’s his early morning terseness that’s allowing him to be so waspish, but he doesn’t miss the falter of Harry’s features as he lets the words go. “Maybe you can be the judge of that.”

“Oh, I’ve already taken care of it,” Harry continues, and with a little hop-skip he turns, ahead of Zayn now, and walks backwards to keep their eyes held together. “Consider yourself thoroughly judged.”

Zayn can’t help the way his skin prickles, not when Harry looks him up and down, all exaggeration, followed by that wide, cheshire grin.

“I expected nothing less,” Zayn mutters, and Harry laughs, half tripping over a fallen branch before he rights himself.

“You should swim with us today,” he says, slightly breathless, pushing hair back off his face. “Consider this a formal invitation.”

Zayn gasps. “What have I done to receive such an honour?”

“You’re putting up with being here, just like us,” Harry says, sounding very, strangely real for a moment, catching Zayn’s eye with a lilting smirk before turning and falling back into step. “I think that qualifies you.”

“You don’t seem like you’re putting up with much,” Zayn says.

“That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it,” Harry says, shrugging, hands in his pockets. Zayn feels like he has whiplash. Harry seems to mould himself to every tone, every timbre of their conversation, changing his posture, his voice, his energy, a this way-that way swing of emotion that leaves Zayn’s head spinning. Now, their shoulders brushing as they kick at piles of pine needles, starting to droop in the late-summer heat, things feel suddenly heavy. “We’re born actors, you and I. Who needs overpriced classes when we’ll spend most of our lives faking the enjoyment of shallow things.”

Zayn slowly stops walking, struck by Harry’s words, and then by the look Harry casts cooly back his way, the calculating expression he gives Zayn over his shoulder slowly invaded by a smirk. Cool and effortless, another flip of a coin, and this side is all shiny again, the mask.

“So,” Harry says brightly. “What do you say?”

Zayn just huffs a laugh and strolls past him.

-

An army of powdery moths are collecting like loose change inside the lamp on the small beside. When he was a boy, before he had his own accounts and a flashy card gifted to him by his parents, all wrapped up in a box with a bow, Zayn used to hoard coins in a small glass jar, hidden away under his bed. His father always thought it pointless, but Zayn liked the smell, the same way one becomes attached to the lingering heaviness that saturates gas stations, or spritzed ocean air. After the card, his father smashed the glass jar open with a hammer, and the smell that wafted out was purely metallic, so strong that when Zayn inhaled it had almost seemed as though he’d been keeping them in his mouth, tucked up along his gums.

A small bug, not a moth, from what Zayn can make out in the sleepy light, lands on the outside of the globed lamp, crawls across the glass, then into the small opening. Zayn watches it flutter helplessly for escape with the others. If he remains still enough in his sheets, he imagines he can almost hear the flimsy, frantic beat of their wings, mixed in with the ever-present buzz of mosquitoes, smarter than the moths, hovering instead at the damp corners of the room, waiting for the darkness to sink down like thick sand to a riverbed and lay claim over their skin.

In the window bed, Harry has been in and out of sleep for the last ten minutes, facing Zayn with his face cushioned in his palm, that very hand squished at an awkward angle into his pillow. Every few minutes he’ll blink abruptly awake, turn to the next page, and within a few paragraphs his breathing has evened again. Each time he does so, his lashes crawl down along his cheeks, the flicker of them opening and closing like a strange mirage, cinematic almost, the projector to the wall type of glow ebbing across the entire room. The entire house is silent, not a breath of wind outside to unsettle the water.

The next time Harry wakes, inhaling sharply and all dazed as he rubs at his nose, Zayn finally speaks.

“Harry,” he says, tightly, because he’s exhausted, dry-eyed from looking into the soft yellow of the light. “I’m turning the lamp off, so best you find something to use as a bookmark before I come over there and close the thing for you.”

Harry blinks Zayn’s way tiredly, and laying like this, Zayn can only see the cut of his eyes, really, the bridge of his nose and the splay of his wild hair. He expected an immediate glare, a smirk of some kind, but Harry’s sleepy, zoned out gaze remains, book falling into his chest as he regards Zayn, almost expressionless.

“How many versions of ourselves do you think there are?” he says, like he’s asking Zayn for tomorrow's weather forecast. “I keep thinking about it. Is that odd?”

Zayn just stares at him. Harry rubs at his eye with the back of his knuckle, then pushes his fingers into his hair, other hand still cradling his book.

“Do you ever think about that?” he continues, both thumbs now folding over the edge of the book, pages bending and flickering back into place, like the dull beat of the moths wings. “Like, if you died, would another version of yourself keep living? Or would the other you, all those people, would they disappear, too?”

“You’re loopy,” Zayn says quietly, mainly to deflect the question, because it’s something he can admit he probably has thought about before, knowing or unknowingly, maybe not in those exact words, but in some capacity. The first time he was ever stoned, fourteen at Danny’s beach house for the weekend, completely out of his mind, he had this awful, spiralling vision in which he was forced to confront seven different versions of himself, but they all represented parts of himself that he supposedly hated, and was only broken out of his reverie by Danny dumping a glass of cold lemonade over his head.

But that was in blind insanity; barely-teenage, drug induced anxiety. This is sleepy one in the morning, sixteen-sober, with a boy staring at him from just a few feet away.

“Maybe,” Harry shrugs, and then he dog-ears the page, but not just the corner, folds the page practically in half, something that makes Zayn’s fingers twitch, this reflex to almost reach out and clutch at Harry’s wrists for doing something so entirely strange, yet entrancing. Inside the lamp the moths and little bugs have whipped themselves into a complete frenzy, swirling like a tornado, their grain-sized bodies making the buttery light flicker and shift. “I just always wonder if there’s another me that would be better suited to all this. Do you ever wonder?”

Harry slips the book back onto the nightstand, _The Fabric of the Cosmos_ , fuzzy orange cover and yellow paged, all cracked along the spine. In that moment, all of Zayn’s petty frustrations seem minuscule, a blip in the universe, replaced by this strange, breathless kind of vulnerability as he watches Harry tilt into his sheets, falling through a cloud, Zayn’s sure, into sleep.

He’s darling. Pink lips and almond eyes and round, unscarred cheeks.

Zayn reaches out for the light.

“I think I do,” he says, darkness caved in now. Faintly, he images the sound of the mosquitoes descending, peeling away from the walls like wet paint. “But that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

Through the thick shadow, the only response he receives is the hush of Harry breathing. The moths are still beating their wings against the glass.

-

The afternoon is drowsy and the more Zayn glances up towards the sky, the more it looks strangely like an egg, the sun a yolk, so bright that it’s surroundings, as his eyes water, go misty white instead of blue. _You’re an idiot_ , he thinks to himself, shading his face with his hand and rolling onto his stomach, the old wood of the pier by the house rough and stiff beneath his ribs. There’s already an ache forming at his lower back, but he couldn’t stand being shut up in the house, and he’s been forced by his parents to socialize, so. As it stands, he’s lathered in sunscreen, dressed still in a shirt and shorts, reclined under the fizzling heat of the sun. 

Beside him, Gemma is flushing a steady pink in her bikini, and on her other side, Harry is stretched out on his back with his shirt covering his face, feet flat to the old wood, damp hair going absolutely wild from the lake water. Their parents had driven off around twelve, claiming they were going out to some luncheon, a restaurant close by where they could discuss business, but Zayn’s sure it’s just an excuse to get completely boozy without having to keep an eye on them all.

Gemma has hooked her iPod up to the shitty portable speaker they found after rummaging through the television cabinet in the lounge, soft, sappy pop music floating out over the water and up to the pines, and Zayn feels as though in this moment, the sun reaching down to his marrow, he could possibly count down all the seconds of his life he’s wasting by being here. He wishes he was with Danny instead, locked up in his room and smoking pot because whilst Zayn’s parents barely remembered he was home, sometimes, they could still smell it on him from a mile off. Danny’s parents never cared about that shit.

“Am I burning?” Gemma asks, rolling onto her front and snapping her gum as she tries to look at her shoulders, over along the backs of her arms. “I feel like I’m burning?”

“Like a lobster, Gem,” Harry says, lazy, his entire face still covered by his shirt.

Gemma brings her fist down into his stomach.

“Bitch!” he shouts, half a cough as he sits up. The shirt falls from his face, now entirely flushed pink, shaded red in a stripe along his cheeks, all sweaty from breathing into the fabric. There’s a smile on his face, though, pure amusement as Gemma sits up and squirts and alarming amount of sunscreen into her palm.

“You can do my back, loser.”

Harry obliges, and Zayn watches them with one eye squinted, light bouncing up off the still lake and making things all sharp and strange. Gemma’s phone buzzes. Harry, hands still slippery with sunscreen, lunges for it, shit-eating grin only growing as Gemma whirls.

“Give that back!”

“ _Ooh,_ who’s _Jack?_ ”

“I swear to God,” Gemma warns, tight-curled fist smacking repeatedly into Harry’s shoulder as he tries to squirm away. “I’ll drown you in this lake.”

“ _Miss you so much_ ,” Harry reads, in a deep, overly put on Californian accent, the kind of thing that makes Zayn’s stomach curl. “ _Can’t wait–_ ”

“Harry!” Gemma screams, snatching the phone back and kicking him in the ribs, their towels tangled up between their bodies. “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

“Does mom know about him?” Harry says, reclined back on his palms now, a kid-God as the sun comes down over him. He looks the very way he did the first time Zayn met him, giddy, sure of himself, all cool. “Should I tell her?”

“No, mom doesn’t know,” Gemma says, glaring warningly. On her back, Harry has drawn a wonky smiley face into the sunscreen he applied. “And it’s going to stay that way, _right?_ ”

“Right,” Harry drawls out. Gemma kicks him again.

“I’m _serious_ ,” Gemma says, flicking her hair back over her shoulder, texting as she talks. “Don’t even try it. I’ve got enough shit on you to have you out on your ass so quick.”

“I’d love to see that,” Harry laughs gleefully, lowering onto his stomach, head resting atop laced fingers angelically.

“Oh?” Gemma raises a brow, chewing her gum viciously. “So she knows about Alex–”

Harry’s face sobers immediately. “That’s not funny.”

“Yeah, well,” Gemma says, gesturing with her hand as if to say, _you get the picture._ “Neither is this. So keep your mouth shut, alright?”

Zayn isn’t quite sure if they’re still joking around with each other. He’s an only child, and he’s always been fascinated with sibling relationships, the ones that work, the ones that don’t. He doesn’t quite have a read on Harry and Gemma yet. Across the rippled wood, Harry meets his eye briefly, almost to check if Zayn’s already watching back. Harry is all flushed in a different way now, right down along his neck.

“What about you, Zayn?” Gemma asks, a throwaway glance over her shoulder and a tone of voice that says she doesn’t really care, more concerned with getting another jab in at her brother, distracted by her buzzing phone again. “Special girl back home?”

Harry rolls his eyes and turns onto his back, face hidden by his shirt again, but not before Zayn sees his expression shift, jaw clenching up, eyes misty where the sun hits.

“Uh,” Zayn says, feeling flushed himself, because there isn’t. He’s kissed a few girls, and there was that incredibly awkward blowjob that Emma Pearsons gave him in a closet during some stupid card game they played at Danny’s, but that never turned into anything. Mostly, Zayn just felt embarrassed by the entire situation. “No.”

“Now, I don’t believe that for one second,” Gemma says, and Harry groans, loudly.

“Gemma,” he snaps. “Shut _up._ ”

They bicker, short, sharp little insults, and Zayn watches on in mild concern, afternoon coming to a close.

Their parents aren’t back until the sun is almost completely hidden by the tree line, the three of them at the table with leftovers and the television on mute in the background, florid light burning through the windows and deepening the tones of the wood. Trisha and Anne are wine-happy and ridiculous, straight up to bed, but Des and Yaser remain out on the porch for a while, smoking cigars that Des produces from an immaculate looking case, and they start on a bottle of gold-shot whiskey, the kind of thing Zayn is always careful about nicking. From the way Harry looks at it, Zayn’s sure he’s thinking the same thing.

Over dinner, they keep staring at each other, stealing glances, Harry raising a curious brow as he chews. Zayn feels pinned from reasons he can’t explain. Harry is facing the windows and every time Zayn looks up, he’s bathed in a new aura, some other tone of deep red, a brand new, burning gold, like the light is seeking him out. Freckles have broken out along the bridge of his nose, all moony eyes, sun-cracked lips.

Zayn’s neck prickles.

-

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Zayn pulls his tired eyes away from the moths in the lamp. The day in the sun has left his bones heavy, but at the same time he feels weightless, wrapped in the cocoon of his sheets but unable to feel their closeness. He’s sure he’s probably sweating because of it, the heat lingering, but again, he’s almost too tired to care, in that blissful, almost asleep state where the overheating of his body might help him fall quickly.

“What?” Zayn answers belatedly, the word all heavy in his mouth, strange like cotton.

“How can you even compare the forms to the soul?” Harry says with a huff, sitting with his back to the headboard, knees tucked close to his chest and book spread over his lap. “Apparently, the forms are universal. That would mean that we all share the same soul, which isn’t true. Idiot.”

“Did you just call Plato an idiot?”

“Absolutely.”

Despite himself, Zayn starts to laugh, delirious as he turns and presses his face into his pillow. “How can you prove that we don’t share the same soul, though? What if we do?”

“We’d all be dying and living again all at once,” Harry says, looking Zayn’s way with a raise of his brow. “And all of those things would just cease to exist, wouldn’t they. There’d be nothing.”

“Sounds amazing,” Zayn hums, shadow clinging to the corners of his vision, and he closes his eyes, Harry laughing softly under his breath.

“Dark,” he comments. “Have you studied much philosophy?”

Zayn’s first thought is that Harry is a complete dick. His second thought, all the more worrying, is that he wants, for reasons he doesn’t understand, to impress Harry so badly it’s strange. His stomach almost sinks when admits to himself that no, he hasn’t, really. A bit of Camus, but he hardly thinks a skim read of _The Plague_ justifies knowing anything concrete about absurdism.

Harry is the kind of boy he wants to impress.

“A little,” Zayn says, deflated, and then in a way that feels lame, “Not much. A bit of Camus, Nietzsche.”

“Sometimes I feel like it’s all pointless,” Harry says, pushing his book away and stretching his arms up above his head, sheets slipping down. His ribcage, despite his arms and neck being tan from the sun, is lily white, shadowed with the gentle wave of his ribs, and Zayn, half-asleep, wonders if it’s as smooth as it looks. “Like, I’m sure with philosophy the point is to find all the points of things. But then, in the end, you kind of just end up not knowing what the point of _anything_ is. Make sense?”

Tilted towards Zayn like this, Harry’s jaw is all shadowed, arms still crossed above his head. His fingers curl against the back of his arm, just by his elbow. He’s sunburnt there, rose-flush, near red on his elbows in this light. If Zayn pressed his fingers there, he wonders how long the impression would last in Harry’s skin, how fast the white indent would flush back to pink, if it’d be the same along Harry’s cheeks. His brain, spiralling all on it’s own, decides not to answer Harry’s question.

“You’re staring,” Harry says, cool, reclined, lashes long and spindly as he blinks calmly, always so upfront when he wants to be, but beneath the exterior, there’s the flutter of his chest, the shaky expanding of his fragile ribs.

“I suppose,” Zayn admits, feeling desperately young and strange, hot and sweating by the backs of his knees and the lines of his hips, the same way he had being shoved into that dark cupboard, Emma touching him, and Zayn, completely unsure of what to do, red-faced with how silly and teenage he felt, and rightfully so. “Do you mind?”

“Not really,” Harry says, just as soft, bottom lip wet. Zayn stares at it and feels so impossibly meek wrapped up in his sheets. “You don’t have to stop.”

“Okay,” Zayn says. He isn’t sure if either of them know what they’re agreeing to. It must be almost two in the morning now. Maybe, come daylight, none of this will matter at all. Maybe he’s already in that hot, swimmy dream. “I won’t.”

And then Harry smiles, soft edged, like he’s reaching out and pressing his hand over Zayn’s heart just with a look.

“Good to know.”

-

The house in the morning smells like the lingering of whiskey and dark smoke. Zayn wakes first, tucks his arms over his stomach as he slowly sits up and glances over at Harry’s bed. They left the curtain open, morning sun wilting through the window, pastel of it’s petals only just lilting over and brushing the edges of Harry’s slack face. There’s a crease in his cheek, limp, gold-touched wrists. At the end of the bed, his feet poke out from the sheets.

Zayn clears his throat softly and meanders into the small ensuite for a long, sleepy, and anxious shower.

The remainder of the day carries much of the same air, their parents completely drowsy, Des and Yaser like drugged out bears, lumbering down the staircase and through the house like they’re sleepwalking. Roasted coffee and honey and OJ, pancakes, lemon, poorly washed glasses in the sink still sticky with the remains of alcohol. Harry only has to look Zayn’s way across the kitchen and Zayn feels himself blushing, cheeks darkening further when Harry just smiles warmly his way and goes back to washing dishes, soap clinging up along his burnt arms, already fading to a tan, the citrus detergent smell too sharp.

They don’t really speak. Another day lounging by the lake becomes Zayn’s fate, only able to spend half an hour in the presence of his parents hungover state before his skin crawls. He sits cross legged out on the pier while Harry and Gemma swim in the lake, trashy pop feeling out of place amongst the serenity, but Gemma sings along while she floats on her back. It’s hours before Harry resurfaces, his fingers and toes all pruned up, and Zayn makes himself almost sick with the thought that he’s just waiting for Zayn to leave.

An obvious tension has reared between them. Zayn doesn’t want to give it a name.

-

Homesickness is something he doesn’t feel often. He doesn’t know if he’s every actually felt it. Normally, on sleepless nights, even when he’s in his own bed, it just feels like an odd, unexplored part of his chest has become clung with a draft, a cool breeze flushing down a chasm, making his spine lock. He stares at the ceiling and presses a hand to that spot almost numbly. At his temples, sweat beads, light flickering again.

“Hey,” Harry says softly, strangely distant. “Are you alright?”

Part of Zayn hates this bluntness. Another part of him, a far smaller, complex part of him, almost spills his guts out onto the sheets at the very question.

“Fine,” he says, head lolling onto his shoulder. Harry is already facing him, book flat to the sheets. Zayn looks at his nipples, looks away, blinking absurdly, out of his damn mind. “Just tired. Thinking.”

“Sure,” Harry says. Zayn hears him run his finger down the part of his pages. Something wet swells at the back of Zayn’s throat.

“What are things like for you at home?” Zayn says, then, borrowing Harry’s bluntness as he looks over again. “Do you even think of it like that?”

“As a home?” Harry questions, and Zayn nods, eyes hot. Harry scratches at his jaw, shrugs. “I dunno. Sometimes it’s good. Gemma makes it bearable. I don’t have many friends, though.”

This, to Zayn, is a surprise, both the remark and the vulnerability that’s starting to shadow across Harry’s face as he draws his finger back up the margin.

“You don’t?” Zayn says softly.

“Not real ones, anyway,” Harry says, offhand.

Zayn understands, though. He has Danny, thank God he does, but even still, there are sometimes things that feel like they’ve never connected between them. The people from his school feel like caricatures of real life, like each day he walks through the halls he’s walking through the set of a soapy daytime drama, all pearly light and fake smiles; and what’s worse, he knows when he puts it on, he’s just as much a part of that world.

“I get it.”

“To be honest, I sort of hate everything about it,” Harry says. “I always feel selfish when I think that, but I do. I feel like a thing.”

“Your dad, he said you’re going to work with him.”

“For him,” Harry corrects, more bitter than Zayn expected. Harry sits up, then, slow, rubs at his eyes tiredly. “I’m sure you understand all that. I want to be a musician but he thinks that’s completely stupid.”

“It’s not.”

“It is to him, and whatever he says, goes.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Harry laughs under his breath.

“What kind of music?” Zayn continues, curling onto his side, that hollow feeling spreading down to his stomach. “Cello?”

“Fuck, no,” Harry says, smile lopsided, sweet. “I love it, but no. I wanna play the guitar, maybe even bass. Write lyrics and riffs and be messy about it. Cello is so perfect, like. You always feel so pristine and clean and powerful when you’ve got that bow in your hands, y’know?”

Zayn doesn’t know. He tried to learn the piano for six months but he was hopeless at it, never practiced, and got on terribly with his teacher.

“Just once, I’d like to fall apart with a song instead of trying to put it back together,” Harry continues. The shrug of his shoulders is the casual, calm, easy going Harry Styles, but the look in his eyes is far away, more delicate. “Something like that, I guess.”

“Maybe you’ll make it happen in another universe,” Zayn says. “You’ve got the name for it. _Harry Styles,_ all up in lights.”

Harry’s smile is strangely sad, crumpled as he picks at a loose thread.

“Hey?” he says then, bottom lip bitten down. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a dick. I’m kind of used to people wanting things from me right away. Even that sounds shitty.”

“No, it’s okay,” Zayn says, hushed. “I understand.”

Harry nods. He’s just wearing boxers, sheets pooled around his hips. Zayn can see the entire line of his spine, the soft swoop of his shoulder blades, soft hips flushing over the top of his waistband. A strange moment of sentimentality passes between them, makes Zayn’s eyes water like he’s ten years old all over again, tearing up at a ridiculous Christmas ad. But this runs further, touches like a pinprick to the deepest chasm of his chest.

“Can I tell you something?” Harry says.

“Anything.” The word is so earnest it aches in Zayn’s mouth.

Like a cat waking from sleep, Harry slips his legs from the sheets and crosses the short space between their beds on clumsy feet, knees bundling up in Zayn’s own blanket, and his body is so warm. Zayn can see everything this close, the grit by the corners of Harry’s eyes, the soft-butter texture of his dewy under-eyes, the yellow glow of the lamplight smoothing out his features. Pink mouth. Brown lashes. Soft, barely there hair along his shins.

Zayn sits up, maybe as a reflex, maybe to get even closer. Harry is cross-legged in front of him and the temptation is too great.

“I’m going to run away,” Harry whispers between them, mischief-tongue and feline eyes, slits when he smiles close-lipped, chest fluttering with his admission.

Zayn blinks at him. “Run away?”

“Yeah,” Harry breathes. He pushes his palms along the tops of his thighs, curls his fingers over his knees as he releases another long exhale. Zayn stares, swallows thickly at the shadows Harry’s hands make in his skin, wonders what he’d do if Zayn were to leave his own, slip a soft thumb against the place Harry’s boxers fall away from the thin skin of his inner thigh. He’s pale there, too, just his like ribs. All the grit is as his knees, the thin bones of his ankles. Zayn feels worlds away but like nothing could ever move him from this point in time.

“How?” he says. “Where?”

“When summer ends,” Harry says, leaning closer, whispering like their parents are hiding out in the hall, like the door is cracked, eyes watching on, and nobody else in the world can know. To be trusted this much has Zayn’s heart thumping. “My parents will send me away, back to school, but I’ll never get there. I’ll take a train, or I’ll fly. By the time they realize I’ll be worlds away.”

It sounds so fantastical. Zayn can’t help but be awed, can’t help but want to grasp onto whatever magic Harry has managed to capture, but then the breeze blows somewhere deep in his chest, icy and sharp, and his eyes go hot.

“What about your family?” he says weakly. “Gemma?”

Harry shrugs and reaches for a loose thread by Zayn’s knee. The brush of his knuckles is intoxicating.

“Nobody will miss me,” he says quietly. Their faces are close.

 _I will,_ Zayn almost says, flushing at the thought. _I think I want things from you, and I’m so sorry. I promise I’m not like them._

Harry’s mouth lifts, a tiny quirk as he pulls at the thread, thumb pushing into the underside of Zayn’s calf through the sheets. “You’ve never wanted to run away?”

A hundred times. A thousand times. Too many times. How easy it would be to miss his stop, to keep going and going to the end of the train-line and get off and go further, taxis and buses and planes until he reached the edge of the world, wherever that is; and what’s stopped him? Guilt? Fear? Certainly not love, but then again, maybe it could be love, the sudden surge of it that appears in the moments he feels the most unwanted, dinner parties spent left alone, the house at night before his parents come home, a childhood spent herded between nannies he can no longer remember the names of.

At the thought of disappearing love comes running like it’s being chased by the devil, a jack-knife thrust that wedges itself painfully into his chest, the kind that makes him cry, makes him feel terrible for even having the thought of abandoning his parents in any of the ways they might have abandoned him. Indifference seems so weak in the face of something that’s taught to be conditional.

“I have,” Zayn admits, meek, that slow swirling starting low in his belly. His parents are just down the hall, fast asleep, and what if he and Harry took off in the night, pine needles underfoot, sweaty from the late-summer heat; if they linked their fingers and disappeared?

Harry’s hand cups Zayn’s jaw.

“Don’t worry,” he says, their noses close, Zayn frozen as he registers the warmth in Harry’s palm, the place he can feel his pulse thudding, the flecks of darkness in Harry’s eyes, the lamplight flickering as the moths scurry for escape. Between the sheets, Harry finds Zayn’s pinky with his free hand, links them together gently. Another inch and their lips would brush, dry, summer-cracked, wet inside like honey. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

-

Harry’s admission hovers like a ghost through the heat of the next day.

Their parents swim in the lake, finally breaking their characters in the miracle of their last full noon at the lake house. On the little pier Zayn sits with his knees to his chest and watches the water ripple, watches as Harry tries to execute a backflip from the bank and fails miserably, wide mouth open and laughing to the sky as he surfaces in a hair-tangled mess, limbs flailing. They suck melon skin dry and Harry catches his eye as he teethes at the white flesh, glinting light catching his wet lashes, the smile they share private and careful.

_We know something they don’t know. We know something they don’t know._

It swings around Zayn’s head like a playground chant. Each time Harry looks his way he feels both elated and doomed, light with the thought of Harry’s trust, weighed heavy with an unknown guilt, with the knowledge that after their time here, he may be the only person with any knowledge of Harry’s whereabouts. That’s where the elation comes back, twisted and strange. _You’re the only one. Just you. Aren’t you special._

“Come swim,” Harry urges him, when the sun is still and unmoving above them, hazy and shaking with the pressure of keeping itself up. Autumn is so close, the trees around them fading to skeletons, but still the warmth bites.

Harry is half in the water, half out, clinging to the edge of the pier with his hair wet along his cheeks. Zayn wonders if Harry would pull him in, if he’d wrap his arms around the back of Zayn’s neck and drag him beneath the murky water, if Zayn had the courage to ask.

Instead, he shakes his head and throws a piece of dried out melon skin at Harry’s face, the two of them laughing softly together, private smiles, Harry’s almond eyes squinted up all shiny-wet until Gemma splashes them both and tugs Harry back into the water.

Their shouts echo upward, and the sky is big and blue, and Zayn wipes at the corner of his eye as he watches Harry paddle out to the centre of the lake, throat thick with feeling.

-

There’s a mosquito, a bug, a _something,_ buzzing in Zayn’s ear. His head feels like it’s full of lead, full of hot, pumping blood, waking from a dark and heavy dream. He swats at the air, or tries, at least, arms stuck under his sheets, sweat-slick.

“Zayn.”

Frowning, Zayn gets his arm loose from the sheet and tries again, searching for the bug in the dark.

His knuckles brush skin.

“ _Zayn._ Wake _up_.”

When he tilts his head back, eyes still adjusting to the dark, Harry is looming over him, and Zayn’s fingers are tucked against his collarbone. Immediately, he feels his face flush pink, swallows thick and heavy as he takes in Harry’s figure, knees either side of Zayn’s body, one hand braced by Zayn’s head, the other curled tight on Zayn’s shoulder.

“Finally,” Harry sighs, and Zayn can feel the warmth of him, can smell his skin and the lake water and something like still-damp shampoo. “I thought you were _dead_.”

Still speechless, Zayn rolls slowly, Harry moving with him, sitting back on his haunches and blinking sleepily at Zayn through the shadows, teeth pearly when he smiles.

“Was sleeping,” Zayn says, scratchy, still waking up. His mind is reeling, skin tingling from Harry’s touch.

“Well, get up,” Harry says, whisper soft as he stands and tugs the sheet off Zayn’s body.

Mortified, Zayn curls his legs up closer to his chest.

“Hey!” he whisper-shouts, heart pumping. He’s just in his boxers, all thin-twig legs and bony ribs, but Harry is nothing but amused as he pesters Zayn to move, touching him like it’s nothing, his shoulders and his chest as he manoeuvres them both through the hall, creeping like mice down the stairs.

“What the fuck are you–”

“ _Sh_.”

“Harry–”

“ _Sh!_ ”

Harry presses a finger to Zayn’s lips. Zayn wants to grab his wrist and keep it there.

Downstairs, moonlight slips through the slits in the tall curtains, blue, silver, hot flushes of ebony, a checkerboard of tones splayed out like uneven tiles. Harry’s skin looks pearly and unmarked as he rustles through the cupboards, skin of his back milky, tan lines all over his arms and neck. Awkward, unsure of himself, Zayn stands in the middle of the kitchen with his arms crossed loosely over his bare stomach.

Finally, after eons of quiet rustling, Harry turns with a giddy smile, his father’s cigar box cradled in hand, hidden amongst an array of pots and pans. The whiskey comes next, Harry up on the counter to reach the top shelf, and Zayn freezes when he sees it, shakes his head as Harry thrusts it into his hands.

“Are you insane?” Zayn hisses. It’s the kind of thing his own father would mark with a pen, the aged stuff that people buy at auctions.

“Only a little,” Harry says, winking as he closes the cabinet and ushers Zayn to the door.

Outside the air is cool and sticky, the lingering heat turned into humidity, and Zayn licks at his dry mouth as it hits, feels the skid of bugs on his skin, hard, uneven ground under their toes as they wobble down towards the water. Still lake, bright moon, the blue skidding out along the glass-water like a pebble skipping waves, a shifting mirage as they hit the pier, old wood underfoot, the night so heavy that Zayn fears he’ll misstep and topple down into the gluggy lake.

Finally, when they reach the edge of the pier, Harry holds out his hand.

Reluctant, Zayn takes it, and together they sit at the piers edge, soles of their feet brushing the water, that single touch enough to spark a shudder of ripples, the surface like skin ruffling with goosebumps, the curl of the moon turning silvery and liquid before their eyes. Harry glows; the light seeks him out, day or night, it seems, and Zayn watches, magnetized to him, in some form of a trance as Harry flicks open the latch on the cigar box.

“You ever smoked one of these?” he asks, smiles devilish and bright from under his lashes.

Zayn shakes his head, feels the same way he did nights before, inexperienced and unsure, wishing he could be more impressive.

The glow of the lighter is a flicker-long burst of orange, a miniature solar flare that brightens the space between their mouths as Harry twists the cigar against the flame. Heady smoke, a burning ring simpering dry and harsh, and Zayn watches wide-eyed as Harry sucks at the end of it, still twisting, little flame burning his knuckles amber, puffing smoke up into the sky, blushed with silver. Zayn wants to touch his ribs, wants to spread his palms over Harry’s chest and feel them expand, push them back in so Harry doesn’t have to, wants to bend over backwards to make Harry look at him for even a second.

Smoke swirls up around their heads, and Harry clears his throat as he throws the lighter back into the box and holds the cigar between them. Hesitant, Zayn takes it, obnoxious and weighty between his fingers. He stares down at it, and then Harry is there, bringing it to his lips, his other hand cupping gently at the back of Zayn’s neck, luring them closer together.

“Hold it like this” he whispers, soft amusement in his eyes as he fixes Zayn’s grip, curls his fingers. Zayn feels hot from his temples down to his feet, inexplicably nervous. The smell is woody and dark, so different to the shitty cigarettes Danny steals for them, and Harry is so careful, so sure as he guides the end of the cigar to Zayn’s mouth. “Wet your lips.”

Zayn does, watches Harry’s eyes linger on his mouth before flicking back up.

“Don’t inhale,” Harry says, and then Zayn’s mouth floods with heat, cheeks puffing a little. He’s quick to release it, inhaling out of habit and coughing when he does so, but Harry is there, fingers curling in Zayn’s hair. He laughs softly under his breath. “What’d I just say?”

“Shut up,” Zayn whispers back, shaky as Harry takes the cigar from him and takes quick puffs, slowly lowering himself down onto one elbow, skin pulled tight over his ribs, hip-bones touched sharp by the moon. Even slower, he lies flat on his back, feet still hanging over the edge of the pier, free hand in his hair as he smokes.

“You just gonna sit there?” he says, glancing at Zayn through the haze of smoke.

Silently, fingers buzzing with the urge to touch, Zayn lets his back meet the wood.

The cigar burns slow, a thirty minute detonation. They pass it back and forth. Above, the sky is cloudless, full of milky-white stars, little specks spilled amongst the ink, and each time Zayn puts the cigar to his mouth he can’t help but fixate on the dampness there, shiver at how strange it is for him to think about it that way, to wonder if Harry is thinking about it, too.

When the cigar is done Harry opens the whiskey. The smell is pungent, makes their mouths wet and chilled, ices their teeth, Harry’s shiny when he smiles at Zayn in the dark, damp-plum mouth and the fuzzy alcohol feeling starting to creep in at the back of Zayn’s throat, under his teeth, then up along the backs of his legs, into his knees as they drink and the nicotine starts to ebb through his body, lying haphazard and lazy-limbed on his back.

“I wish we could stay here forever,” Harry says into the dark.

_We. Us. You and me. Just us? Forever?_

“I don’t want to stay anywhere forever,” Zayn says, words slurred.

“Why’s that?” Harry says, head lolling onto his shoulder, brow all furrowed like he’s surprised that Zayn doesn’t agree.

“Because I’ve already spent long enough stuck wherever I am now,” Zayn says. “Where I’ll probably stay until I die.”

“That’s bullshit,” Harry says, rolling onto his side, up onto his elbow to stare down at Zayn fiercely. “Don’t say that.”

“I’ll tell you how the rest of my life will go, ready?” Zayn says, lifting his hand. Sluggish, drunk, he counts: “I’ll graduate. I’ll go to college. I’ll hate it. I’ll intern for my father, and I’ll hate that too. I’ll work for him until he’s dead, then my kids will work for me until I’m dead, and it’ll keep going that way until the sun explodes or we get sucked into a blackhole or whatever the fuck it is that destroys the human race.”

Harry is silent, the words settling heavily between them. The night is quiet, barely even the chirp of bugs, and in the heat Zayn can hear Harry breathing, feels the steady inhale before he stumbles to his feet, looming over Zayn with his hands on his hips. Then he goes a step further, climbing up onto one of the old wooden poles that supports the pier, tall like a statue.

“Get down!” Zayn says, sitting up so quickly his head spins, but Harry just puts his hands back onto his hips and shakes his head. Panic licks up Zayn’s spine. “ _Harry._ ”

“No. No, I won’t,” Harry says drunkenly, pointing at Zayn, at the sky, in the vague direction of the tree-line. “I’m sick of–. I’m sick of lying down and playing dead. I’m tired of being a puppet, Zayn.”

Zayn blinks up at him, wild hair and his flushed cheeks and the moonlight bathing him, reaching for him, still.

“We’re gonna conquer the world!” Harry screams, hands cupped around his mouth, and the words echo, shudder the trees.

“Don’t!” Zayn says, looking back towards the house, expecting the lights to flush yellow, for it to spill out into this silver pocket of heat they’ve made for themselves, to ruin everything.

“My name up in lights, just like you said,” Harry continues wildly, beaming, teeth shined as he smiles, and Zayn’s heart expands, all his fear seeping away, mixing with heat. “I’ll run away. I’ll be a star, Zayn, I promise.”

His chest is heaving, both of them shaking from the excitement, and then Harry finds Zayn’s eyes in the dark, and nothing has ever felt more clear.

“And you can come with me,” Harry says. “Let’s run away together.”

_Together. Us. Me and you._

_Forever. Forever. I could do forever if it was with you._

With a victorious shout, mixed and muddled with laughter, Harry vaults off his perch and bombs into the lake.

Water splashes up, the quiet night instantly shattered, and the ripples flush and shake in an eruption, waves that seem wild and huge in the unsteady slant of moonlight. It fizzles, and Zayn lurches forward, heart in his throat as he waits for Harry to surface, sighing when he finally does, inches from where Zayn is leant over the edge of the pier.

“You idiot!” he hisses, but his facade cracks when Harry laughs and falls back into the water with a splash, both of them giggling together, quieter now, like they know that at any moment, the lights could turn on, that they’ll be caught with the cigars and the nearly empty whiskey and their plans to run will be spoiled.

Because this is what it is, now, from this moment onwards. They’re running.

“Jump in,” Harry urges, coming closer, grasping at Zayn’s wrist with wet fingers. “Z, jump in.”

Giddiness pools in Zayn’s belly at the nickname.

“I can’t,” he says, breathless, beyond frustrated with himself again for having to hold back.

“Please,” Harry begs.

“I don’t know how.”

“How to what?”

“Swim.”

Harry blinks up at him. His lashes have clumped together. The moon is sinking steady and slow. Morning is coming.

“Meet me at the bank, then,” Harry says, and he pushes away and paddles, Zayn watching him go, unable to move until his foggy mind clears, until he’s able to finally draw his eyes away from the wet droplets Harry left on his hands.

Stepping into the water feels weightless. The first press of the lakebed is wet, squelchy, soft between his toes, and he holds his arms over his hips as he kicks nervously at the shallows. The way the water cups his ankles makes him shudder, the slow lick of it crawling up his calves as he wades inch by inch through the thick water.

He’s thigh deep when he stops, the bottom of his boxers sticky and damp with the first brushes of the lake, and he looks up to find Harry staring back across the stretch, covered up to his shoulders with dark-blue.

“C’mon,” he whispers. “You can stand up. It’s not even swimming.”

“Harry,” Zayn says helplessly, tightening his arms around himself as he starts to shiver, because despite the lingering humidity, the glugginess of the water, the way the lakebed ebbs beneath his feet, his skin is flushed with goosebumps, pulled taut as he watches Harry watch him back, as he watches him wade closer through the water, chest shiny-silver and slick, nipples in stiff points from the chill.

Finally, just a few feet away, Harry stops and holds his hand out between them.

“You trust me,” he says softly, a quirk of his brow, the golden boy reclined on that bed, “don’t you?”

The alcohol is hitting Zayn all at once and the world is a blur but through it all Harry’s eyes are gentle, and his fingers close, familiar, and slow, steps timid, Zayn shifts through the water and grips them tightly, releasing a gulp of breath as Harry steadies him, water tickling his stomach and curling up over his waist.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, embarrassed the moment it leaves his mouth, but Harry just laughs under his breath, spreads his palm so that Zayn’s fingers follow suit, and then Harry links them and pulls, stepping back. Zayn is helpless as he follows.

The water is cold, but once it reaches his shoulders it feels strangely like he’s being enveloped in something familiar, like if he remained still for long enough he’d start to warm, the same way cold sheets take time to gather body heat during the winter. And then there’s Harry, who this close radiates warmth through the water, warm breath, warm eyes, warm where their hands are still linked beneath the lake, pruning up. Zayn doesn’t have enough energy left to be concerned over how tightly he’s holding on.

“Not so bad, is it?” Harry says, even as his teeth chatter, tendrils of wet hair in his eyes.

“It’s bad,” Zayn says lowly, and Harry throws his head back as he laughs, stepping further back. Zayn digs his heels into the mushy bed.

“Just a little further,” Harry urges.

Zayn shakes his head. “This is fine. Right here is fine.”

“Zayn,” Harry drawls, coming closer, floating like he’s lifted his feet. “What’re you so afraid of?”

 _You,_ Zayn thinks helplessly. _Everything. All of this. You._

Maybe the silence speaks for itself, answers itself, folds into itself and disappears, because when Harry stares back, Zayn can see the shakiness of his chest, that look in his eyes, and for all his confidence and cool smiles and dazzling charm, maybe Harry is just as terrified of this, finally giving in enough to show it.

They both know how to put on a show when they need to, flashing lights and costumes and powdered cheeks, lines rehearsed in the mirror and years of practice in the corners of rooms, the figure in the shadows, the wilting flower that sees sunlight every once in a while, when the curtain is left open, when the sun floats by and offers sunlight for a few short minutes a day, and after that it’s just darkness, the waiting game, the fear of shrivelling up, being forgotten, going rotten at the roots. Unsavable. Unloved.

When Zayn was seven, he cracked his head open on the tiles at his own birthday party so somebody would give him attention.

Harry’s eyes are wet. He’s coming closer. They’re drifting. Zayn can’t feel the bottom of the lake anymore.

It’s all so familiar yet so far away, the hot-hot-wet-wet cry of want, a baby wailing, a child with crocodile tears, teenage angst and the door slammed closed and the door drilled off it’s hinges so it can’t be slammed anymore, rattling drawers and things thrown at walls and leaving dents, nights wanting to leave not only home but everything, himself, to become finally detached from it all, to kick and scream and struggle and sob and to somehow do all of it silently, to wilt, to bang fists and scratch and wait for the sun to come and then Harry touches–

This is the trapeze. This is his life swinging, the divots of his palms now beds for sweat, and he’s slipping, it’s all gone slick, and there’s the slide and the deadly drop, and then this moment: Harry’s hands framing his face and pulling him in.

They fall and knock together painfully. Harry’s mouth tastes like smoke and heat and just like Zayn’s own, like another person, tongue, teeth, gums; blood pumping fast, the water with it’s hand around their throats as they start to go under, and Zayn is gasping for breath, clinging to this, to Harry’s shoulders, arms around his neck, chests bumping and tears melting into the lakewater like they never even existed.

They’re caught up in the net like flies in a spiderweb – the harder the struggle, the harder the escape, the worse the torture. And isn’t this the worst torture of them all.

Harry makes this sound, this soft _uhn_ that sends Zayn reeling. There are hands on his hips, fingers in his hair, on his chest. Harry is everywhere. Harry is the lake water, cupping Zayn close. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to keep kissing, each crush of their mouths bruising but so gentle, the heaviness between them almost agonising, like gravity is squirming, like there’s a black hole forming at the millimetre space between their heaving chests and they’re being sucked inside together, ribs cracking under the pressure.

When they finally break away, ragged breathing and eyes wide, Harry’s hand finds Zayn’s cheek, keeps his mouth parted with his thumb as they stare at each other. Everything is wet and dripping and suffocating and Zayn doesn’t want to let go. He doesn't want to go home tomorrow. Even in the dark he can see the flush of Harry’s cheeks, can _feel_ it, how much warmth is radiating from him. He can’t look away. If he looks away, he might wake up. This might all be some strange figment of his imagination, a dreamworld he’s made up to escape.

In the thickness of the water it feels like their bones are melting together, like they’re becoming one.

 _You’re changing me,_ Zayn thinks, eyes hot as Harry kisses him again, both hands cupping roughly at Zayn’s jaw. _Every time you looked at me, you altered part of me. You’re doing it now. And nothing will be the same once this is all done. You’ll be the boy in my dreams. A ghost in the mirror._

“Touch me,” Harry whispers, so Zayn does, and the crush pulls stronger, makes their spines lock and their limbs tangle and twist.

And Zayn knows, in that moment, that he’ll see Harry everywhere, in everything, until he never sees him at all, that the second he loses Harry in his mind, he’ll know that he’s changed Zayn the most; because that is the moment in which somebody becomes so much a part of someone else, they can no longer be recognized as two separate people.

“Will you call?” Zayn whispers, almost lost between their mouths, between the ache in the words, how thin they tumble out.

He knows that Harry won’t, that he won’t either. Saying it is the only way to make it seem like enough.

“Every day,” Harry promises.

“I think I love you?” Zayn says, feeble, tears spilling over, so impossibly, stupidly young, time freezing between them, each of Harry’s slow blinks the mallet and chisel pitching chunks from Zayn’s cold-marble heart, carving out a space there, in their own version of forever.

He wishes he could catch this moment in his hands, keep it always, but moments, like time, are made up of sand, of water, air, things that can never last. It’s slipping. The sky is flushing pink and it’s all slipping, and the shadow is shifting, and they’re tucked in close and wilting together, and the sun is rushing closer, closer, faster-faster-faster, frantic and pushing through the trees to find them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> if u come say hi on [tumblr](http://fondleeds.tumblr.com/post/184270804285/trapeze-by-fondleeds-do-you-ever-think-about) or leave me a comment here i promise i'll love u forever. [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/gonewilde/playlist/0iWOhBdNOwaqnIVYNXKT8T?si=UQ3MoLpcRpui-xohsEHc2Q) if u want it. thanks for reading babes!
> 
> ♡


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